CHAPTER XIV

The Ring at the Bottom of the Glass

After the conversation in the Krakow park, Piotr headed home convinced that this time he had truly left Anna. Yet the relief was not pure. It carried regret, because despite everything that divided them, Anna remained someone close to him, and uneasiness over whether the word "over" would be enough to settle the matter. For now, he did not want to return to it. His thoughts were already in Janów.

Małgorzata and Paweł were waiting there, along with the life she and Piotr had begun arranging at a pace neither of them could explain. For years she had borne the burden of caring for her son alone; for years he had imagined a house full of children. Each saw in the other an answer to something long missing. There was also the matter they never spoke of. Both knew their story had not begun with a letter or with the meeting beneath Sigismund's Column. They did not need to explain it to each other, much less reveal it to anyone else.

After he returned to Legionowo, Małgorzata's name entered every conversation. Piotr spoke of her mother, of Janów, of the long nights they had spent talking, and at last of five-year-old Paweł. That was what he feared mentioning most. For years Małgorzata's family had repeated the story that, while working in Warsaw, she had been raped by an unknown man. For many relatives it was the only explanation they could accept. Piotr knew it was not the whole truth, but he had no intention of explaining anything to anyone.

Jadwiga received the news of the new woman in his life with a relief her son had not expected. She asked neither for details nor what people might say. Something else mattered more to her.

"She didn't kill the child. She gave birth to him and is raising him. She must be a decent girl," she said simply.

With one sentence she dispelled the fears Piotr had carried since returning from Janów. Małgorzata had not yet crossed the Koryckis' threshold, yet she had already ceased to be a stranger in their home. Paweł, too, was neither an appendage to the family being planned nor an obstacle to be accepted. He came with his mother and, from the beginning, had a place of his own in that family.

Frequent journeys between Janów, Warsaw, and Legionowo began. Małgorzata's first visit to the Korycki home was meant to be more than a formal introduction of a future wife to the parents. Piotr wanted her to meet Czarek as well, Urszula's two-year-old son, who for the past few years had been the closest thing he had to a child of his own. Three days beforehand he therefore announced to his sister that he would take the boy along when he went to Warsaw to meet Gosia.

They reached the bus station without difficulty and, as usual, far too early. The waiting itself soon became a problem.

"I have to pee," Czarek suddenly declared in a voice that left no room for negotiation.

The bus from Janów could arrive at any moment. Crowds surged around the platforms, and a line stretched outside the restroom. Piotr looked around, then tugged the boy toward a patch of nearby bushes.

"Czaruś, make it quick."

The two-year-old rose to the occasion, but by the time they returned, the bus was already there. This time it was not Piotr waiting for Małgorzata, but she for him. She greeted them without complaint, smiled at Czarek, and the three of them set off toward the city bus. Her first encounter with the family began with a minor delay and a child's urgent need, as though from the outset it was meant to be ordinary rather than ceremonial.

On her next visit, Małgorzata brought Jadwiga two large bottles of living water and dead water. She knew about her future mother-in-law's degenerative illness and believed the water might ease her suffering, if only a little. One bottle did not survive the journey. When Gosia opened the bag, water sloshed inside and the soaked contents clung to shards of glass.

"Look. It broke," she said, close to tears.

She did not care about the bottle or the ruined bag. What hurt was that she had come carrying something meant to help Jadwiga and now had nothing to give her. Piotr watched her helplessness with growing emotion. In Małgorzata's concern for a woman she barely knew, he saw a promise of harmony between the two most important women in his future home. He believed that if they came to like each other, everything else would fall into place.

He planned their next meeting in Janów with unusual care. He brought a ring, a bottle of champagne, and an idea he did not share with Małgorzata. Late that evening, after treating Marianna Andrzejuk, they sat facing each other in armchairs. The lamp was dimmed, the conversation moved easily, and a small gold circle waited at the bottom of one of the glasses.

Małgorzata noticed it only after some time. She tilted the glass, peered more closely, and began fishing out the object with a little fork. That was when Piotr knelt before her.

"Gosia, will you marry me?"

She froze with the ring between her fingers. She knew they had been speaking of a life together, so the question itself could not have been entirely unexpected, but the moment and the gesture were. For a while she looked at him with complete seriousness, as though making certain that behind the carefully staged surprise stood a real decision.

"Yes. I will marry you," she answered at last.

Only then did she smile. The ring that moments earlier had lain at the bottom of the glass slipped onto her finger, and the intention they had discussed half in jest and half in disbelief became a promise.

Their first morning as an engaged couple brought joy, though each experienced it differently. Piotr awoke with a sense of happiness free from the fear that had accompanied his engagement to Anna. Małgorzata, too, delighted in the ring and in the new word fiancé, yet she was already thinking about what had to be done: her parental leave was ending, she would soon have to return to work in Warsaw, and they needed a place where she, Piotr, and Paweł could live together.

"Do you know what I was thinking about last night?" she asked when she woke.

"Us?"

"How did you know?" She laughed. "But I mean specifically, you know..."

"No, I don't," he teased.

"If we're going to marry, we'll have to do it very soon."

"I could do it today."

"Oh, stop joking. I'm serious. My parental leave will end soon, and I'll have to go back to work in Warsaw. If we were married by then, we could rent a place somewhere nearby."

Piotr then told her about Jadwiga's proposal: after the wedding they could live in Legionowo for a while. The three of them would have one small room. It would be cramped, but cheaper, and they could save toward a place of their own. Małgorzata listened, asked where Paweł would sleep and how she would get to work, then decided after a little thought that they could try it at first.

From that morning on, nearly every conversation circled back to the wedding, the reception, and the home they would share. Paweł also had to be prepared for a change whose direction the adults had already chosen but which, to a five-year-old, was still something entirely new.

"Gosia, we have to start getting him used to something..." Piotr began.

"To what?"

"I'd rather he didn't call me 'sir' anymore. And I'd like to be entered on his birth certificate."

"Then we'll have to start getting him used to it," she replied with a smile.

The next day Paweł was playing on the floor when he suddenly looked up.

"Daddy, look."

Piotr turned so sharply that it was as though the boy had called for someone else. Paweł was pointing excitedly at something, unaware that one short word had stopped the grown man in mid-step. Piotr wanted to answer naturally, but for a moment no sound came. He looked at Małgorzata. She merely smiled, as if she had known all along what the word would do to him.

"I see, son," he said at last, more softly than he intended.

He had waited years to hear that word. He needed no ceremony and no witnesses—only a boy who, for the first time, had decided he could call him that.

By evening they had agreed that the engagement should be formally repeated before the families. They chose an approximate wedding date, discussed where they might live, and even talked about the color of the groom's suit. Their plans were growing faster than the time they had actually spent together.

A few days later Piotr walked into the Under the Oaks Clinic with news he was incapable of keeping to himself.

"Ms. Marzena, you'll be invited to the wedding," he announced from the doorway.

"When are you planning it?"

"How did you know it was mine?"

"You could feel it in the air for a long time." She laughed. "When?"

"Toward the end of August."

"We'll see. I think I may be away on vacation then. I'm afraid so."

Piotr's face fell. In those days he would gladly have invited the whole world so that everyone could share in his happiness. At least Jacek was not trying to wriggle out of it; he had already promised to attend. That day he had come to the clinic for another round of practical training. The excitement of the coming wedding, however, had to give way to ordinary work. A woman and her child were scheduled for ten o'clock.

The child turned out to be a large sixteen-year-old. For some time he had suffered from relentless headaches. His mother had taken him from doctor to doctor, but each new examination and treatment brought no improvement. She came to the bioenergy healers as a last resort.

"Please sit on the examination table, and you stand here in the middle," Piotr instructed.

He began the examination as he had many times before. After a moment, however, his hands stopped. A thought arose so absurd that he should have dismissed it at once, yet instead he asked Jacek to examine the boy himself. The trainee approached, concentrated, and almost immediately recoiled.

"Paraphrenia. Paraphrenia, or..." he whispered.

He did not finish. He did not have to. Both men went pale, though they had not exchanged a word on the subject beforehand. They had no rational basis for such a diagnosis and had never encountered a case like this. Another word hung between them, far more disturbing, one neither wished to utter in front of the boy and his mother.

The woman watched them more and more closely.

"Can you help him?" she asked, as though the last remnant of hope depended on the answer.

"I will treat your son, but on one condition," Piotr replied.

"What condition?"

"Take him to church now. Have him ask the priest to hear his confession and give him Holy Communion. Then come back to us."

She did not protest. She nodded, took her son by the hand, and left. They did not return that day.

When the door closed behind them, a heavy, airless silence remained in the room. For a long while Jacek stared at the spot where the boy had stood. Piotr made no attempt at a joke either. Both were thinking the same thing, but neither wanted to be the first to give it a name.

"Did you have to frighten her with the priest?" Jacek finally asked.

"What else was I supposed to do? I had to."

They were certain the woman had decided they were charlatans and would never return. They were wrong; she came back several weeks later. That day, however, they could not know it. The tension was broken only when the florist from Mr. Kulesza's property peered inside with a problem so mundane that at first it sounded almost grotesque.

"Mr. Piotr, how does this bioenergy healing work? Do you have to believe in it for it to work?"

"Honestly? I don't know myself. I only know it works, and belief probably doesn't matter much. I once treated a dog. It's unlikely the dog believed in what I was doing, and yet it recovered."

"The thing is, my husband doesn't believe in any of this, and he has the hiccups..."

"The hiccups?" Piotr burst out laughing. "Tell him to hold his breath, or give the man a proper scare."

"But he's had them for a month."

The laughter vanished from the healer's face.

"A month? I've never heard of anything like that. Bring him in."

"He won't come. The old fool is stubborn as a mule."

"Do you have a photograph of him?"

The woman searched her wallet and produced an old identification photograph. Piotr placed it on the counter. He had never tried working from a picture before and was not even sure he believed the stories about doing so. This time, however, there was no patient before him on whom he could focus his hands and attention. He closed his eyes and imagined the man standing beside him.

After a moment the photograph ceased to be merely a scrap of paper. Piotr had the impression that he could sense the absent man's entire body, the source of the problem, and the way it might be removed. The certainty lasted only briefly. When he finished, it drifted away like a dream, leaving a hazy memory of something he could never have explained sensibly to anyone.

"All right, we'll see what comes of it. Go to your husband and check whether he's still hiccupping," he said without much conviction.

He and Jacek had barely begun laughing over the experiment when the florist rushed back in.

"Mr. Piotr, you won't believe it—it stopped!"

"And? Does he believe now?"

"Not a chance. The stupid old man said it was a coincidence."

To her husband, the hiccups might have stopped by coincidence. There was, however, another skeptic on the premises: Mr. Kulesza, Dr. Danuta's husband. As soon as he heard the story, he entered the clinic with a dignified stride.

"They say hypnosis can cure a man of alcoholism."

"It can."

"And apparently you can hypnotize someone so deeply that he remembers nothing afterward..."

"Usually, yes."

"I've got such a strong will, it would never work on me," Mr. Kulesza teased.

Piotr was easily provoked into such experiments.

"Please lie down on the examination table."

"And what—will you cure me of smoking?" the older man mocked.

"Maybe."

Once the unexpected patient had settled down, his wife, Ms. Marzena, and Jacek began following the healer's every movement. Silence fell over the room.

"You are lying comfortably. Your whole body is resting, relaxing... You feel warm and comfortable. Your feet are growing light; the fatigue is draining from them..."

After a while Piotr decided to test how deeply the patient had yielded to suggestion.

"You are lying in a green meadow now. Beneath your back you can feel grass warmed by the sun, and above you comes the steady murmur of trees. It is so pleasant... except for that stubborn fly. It keeps circling your face. Brush it away."

Mr. Kulesza did not move so much as an inch. Piotr concluded that the attempt had failed and began bringing him out of it.

"I am going to count from one to ten. When I finish, you will wake up, clench your fists tightly, and stand. One, two..."

At the final number, Mr. Kulesza sat up on the examination table with a triumphant expression.

"Didn't I tell you? I can't be hypnotized. At least I got to lie down comfortably. Well, almost comfortably—some fly kept buzzing around my nose..."

He could not understand why everyone suddenly burst out laughing.

"What?"

The ringing telephone drowned out any answer. A moment later Ms. Marzena's immortal phrase came from the herbal shop:

"Mr. Piotr, telephone for you."

When he went to the receiver, the others moved closer to the doorway as though on a signal.

"Hello?"

"Good afternoon, sir. This is Agnieszka," said a man's voice.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. I saw the giraffes. They were very beautiful."

"Thank you. The subject has been checked. We have no objections, but the family is highly questionable. Please think it over. The decision is yours."

"Thank you very much. Goodbye."

The laughter after the hypnosis died as quickly as it had begun. Those gathered could not hear every word, but a man's voice introducing itself as "Agnieszka" was bound to arouse curiosity. Only Jacek dared ask directly later, on the train back to Legionowo. He received no answer.

Piotr remained silent for most of the journey. Beneath the clatter of the wheels, one sentence kept returning: "the family is highly questionable." "Agnieszka" was the codename of the man in "Piast" responsible for gathering information about people who were about to enter the close circles of the organization's members. No objections had been raised against Małgorzata herself. The warning concerned her relatives and came without details. It could be dismissed—or filled in with the worst one could imagine.

At home an even simpler conversation was waiting, though it still had not taken place. Jadwiga knew nothing about the ring or the planned wedding date.

"Mama, could you come talk to me for a moment?" Piotr asked as soon as he had eaten.

"Not now. When Ula comes back, she can take Czaruś," Jadwiga replied, occupied with her grandson.

The conversation was postponed. When Urszula finally appeared, she brought matters of her own, and later everyone wanted to watch the evening movie. Once again there were no few minutes to spare for her son.

Two days later he tried again.

"Has Ula come back yet, so Mama can come talk to me for a minute?"

"Come back from where?" Jadwiga looked at him in genuine surprise.

"The day before yesterday I asked Mama to talk. Mama said she would come when Urszula took care of her own child."

"Piotruś, are you starting again?"

For years that sentence had ended arguments before they had even begun. Piotr fell silent. Since he could not speak about the engagement, he decided at least to clarify Agnieszka's warning. Such matters were not discussed over the telephone. The nearest contact in "Section Two" lived in Płock. He had no choice but to arrange a meeting.

From a public telephone booth he dialed Iwona's number and introduced himself by the codename she had known since the years of martial law.

"I spoke to Agnieszka a few days ago, but the giraffes got in the way..."

"I know. In that case, come see me. When can you make it?"

"Tomorrow, preferably."

"No problem. I'll be home from ten. Come over."

When he returned, he told Jadwiga that he would leave early the next morning and would not be back until evening.

"Where are you going now?"

"To Płock."

"What for? Don't you have anything better to spend money on?"

"I'm going to invite someone to the wedding."

"Whose wedding?"

"Mine, of course."

"Your own mother knows nothing, and you..."

"I wanted to talk to Mama. I'm only waiting for Mama to find time for me."

Jadwiga sighed.

"Just don't start a quarrel now."

"That's exactly what I mean. My affairs are always a 'quarrel.' Mama has to go—Czaruś is crying."

The journey to Płock took several hours the next day: a train, a wait for the regional bus, then a city bus. Piotr reached Iwona's apartment block close to noon. His old friend did not try to heighten the suspense. She sat across from him and presented the information one item at a time, in a calm, almost official voice.

According to the material gathered by "Section Two," Ryszard Andrzejuk, son of Jan, had belonged to ORMO[1] in Biała Podlaska until the period of martial law. It was not entirely certain that the record referred to the same man, but the combination of first name, surname, father's name, and place of residence was considered too close to ignore. The rest was worse. Three members of the immediate family were identified as secret informants for the Security Service, and one other person had probably been blackmailed by the state apparatus. Małgorzata's own record, however, was clean.

Piotr listened without interrupting. At the first name he turned toward the window. By the time Iwona reached the others, he sat perfectly still. Each new fact struck at the image of the family he intended to enter, yet none of it altered what he believed he knew about Gosia.

"I'm sorry," Iwona said when she had finished.

"I'm marrying the woman, not her relatives. Gosia has her own opinion of her sisters, her brother-in-law, and her father. She's different. You know as well as I do that every family has people like that."

After a moment he added more quietly:

"My own uncle was an informer."

Iwona did not try to persuade him to change his decision. The report was meant to warn him, not decide for him. In time the conversation turned to the wedding. Piotr had assumed that even if the others from the organization's "family" stayed away, she at least would be there. This time Iwona had to disappoint him.

For several months she had been seeing a man with whom she hoped to build a future. Early in the relationship she had told him about her former life, and Piotr from Legionowo appeared in many of those stories. Only later did she discover how pathologically jealous her fiancé could be. Now even open contact with her old friend risked a scene.

"If you told him how we slept outdoors in the Tatras in the same sleeping bag, I can see why he might be suspicious," Piotr said with a laugh.

"And to think we didn't sin that night!" she replied, laughing with him, then grew serious. "No one would believe it."

They could have gone on reminiscing for a long time, but the departure time of the bus to Warsaw was approaching. They said a warm goodbye, both aware that another unguarded conversation might not come soon.

After Piotr returned to Legionowo, Jadwiga herself raised the subject she had not previously found time to hear about.

"Perhaps you'll invite me to this wedding too," she said by way of greeting.

Piotr did not want to begin with yet another quarrel.

"We need to talk. There's a lot to discuss."

They sat on the small couch. This time he told her everything in order: the engagement, the approaching end of Małgorzata's parental leave, her return to work, and the need to find room for both her and Paweł.

"She can't commute to the hospital from Janów, and we don't want to live here together before the wedding," he concluded.

That argument persuaded Jadwiga. She decided the wedding should take place quickly and that August would be the most sensible time. Once her initial relief had passed, however, she began arranging the ceremony according to her own vision.

"If it's going to be in August, you should have an alcohol-free reception, like Ula did."

"I don't need alcohol. I'll talk to Gosia."

"Talk to her. August is the month of abstinence. And perhaps she would agree to have the reception in Legionowo? We could rent the same hall we used for Ula's wedding. It wasn't expensive, and everyone was pleased..."

To Jadwiga, Legionowo meant a familiar hall, known costs, and the ability to oversee the preparations. The young couple were more concerned with what would happen after the ceremony. Two beds would not fit in the small room, so Paweł would have to sleep in the living room. There were also questions about sharing a kitchen, meals, and Małgorzata's night shifts. The conversation stretched almost until morning, and most of the issues still had to be discussed with Gosia herself.

Their next telephone conversation produced only half a solution. Małgorzata could not imagine an entirely alcohol-free wedding, but she promised to ask her parents about holding the reception in Legionowo. Piotr relayed her answer to Jadwiga as gently as he could.

"I spoke to Gosia," he began as soon as he crossed the threshold.

"And?"

"She says there has to be a little alcohol, because some people would feel insulted if there were none at all. But only a token amount. On the other hand, there probably won't be a problem with having the reception here."

The good news did not erase the first impression. Jadwiga felt disappointed, though not enough to refuse the trip to Janów for the formal engagement, planned to coincide with the name days of Piotr and Paweł.

The two families met in the yard at 6 Moniuszki Street. The adults watched one another with a caution no one wished to call distrust. Paweł freely called Piotr "Daddy," and the gold ring on Małgorzata's hand lent their headlong plans an appearance of order and permanence. Nothing unpleasant happened. Back in Legionowo, the opinions were generally favorable.

Only the location of the reception remained unsettled. Małgorzata had no objection to Legionowo, but Marianna rejected the idea outright. Piotr explained that his fiancée herself would have agreed, yet to Jadwiga the refusal was the first clear sign that the two families might understand the shared preparations in entirely different ways. The ring remained on Małgorzata's finger, the wedding date drew closer, and beneath the happiness the first shadow began to appear.